


Pink

by AliceAro



Series: In Another Reality [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angry!Amell, Colorblind Soulmate AU, Depression, F/M, One Shot, Side Story, Soulmate AU, Soulmate Color AU, Soulmates, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:19:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13323801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceAro/pseuds/AliceAro
Summary: Loghain saved her...If only she was more deserving of it.Dragon Age AU where you're colorblind till you meet your soulmate.[Author's Note: This is like a one-shot side story to the on-going series of Prisms which you kinda gotta read to get a better understanding of whats happening in this story.Another note: Loghain doesn't really save her, Amell just romanticize the fuck outta their encounter.]





	Pink

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so if you haven't read Prisms what basically happened is that:  
> \- Amell lost her ability to see color, which shouldn't be possible.  
> \- She tried to kill Alistair.  
> \- She was arrested, but she escaped.

Sly as a cat, a mage girl padded through the encampment with her head held high and proud.  
  
_This is kinda fun,_ the girl had thought when she had brazenly walked past the Wardens that had detained her in a tent. It was so easy to be shameless when no one can see you.  
  
Amell suppressed a giggle.  
  
During their journey to Ostagar, Duncan had given her basic lessons in tracking, hunting, scouting, and other skills that required moving about undetected. As with many things, she excelled in those small lessons. And while she already knew how to sneak around from her days in the Tower, the rogue had refined those rather rudimentary skills.  
  
Now combined with her cloaking magic, she was practically a phantom in the wind. No one will ever find her again!  
  
The sensible voice in her head (--the voice that tells her to be humble and civil, the voice she always ignores--) reasons that she can’t _possibly_ be that good; her arrogance just leads her to believe so.  
  
It hadn’t been awfully difficult to escape from the Wardens. Her hands weren’t bound and she wasn’t tied to anything. She was merely asked to sit quietly in the middle of a tent while they figured out what to do with her. So when the winds zipped along the fabrics of the tent, she made her getaway. Her magic willed the shadows to engulf her. Once her image dissolved into nothing, she used the loud winds to mute her movements as she wriggled through the slightly opened slit of the tent.  
  
Now she skipped merrily along the pathways as she explored the camp. The skipping was metaphorical, of course. She had to keep her footsteps light if she wanted to continue hiding her presence from the other occupants of the camp.  
  
A turn in her step led her to the direction of the kennels. Earlier, a mabari had caught her attention there. It looked sick, and for some reason Amell felt a strong urge to care for the animal. It was a foreign feeling, but hopefully it would be harmless to indulge it. After all, it was just a dog, and dogs were not people. People were deceitful and cruel. They should never be trusted, she thought, especially people she’s just met--even people who make funny jokes and have a cute face and a warm, goofy smile.  
  
Amell shook a certain Templar out of her thoughts.  
  
Besides, she can’t change her mind about going to the kennels now. The sign she left for Duncan indicated the he would find her there. She and the rogue were going to need to chat if she was really going to help and stay with the Grey Wardens.  
  
She was just going to have to keep herself busy while she waited for him. Maybe she’ll practice some healing spells on the mabari. She was rubbish at it with people-- but again, who cares about people-- but maybe she would be better with animals. It was always better when it wasn’t people.  
  
Something sparkled in the corner of her eye. Amell’s heart caught in her throat.  
  
Grey sunlight gleamed off an object on the ground a short distance away. And in that stripe of light was the tiniest sliver of unmistakable color.  
  
The mage girl lunged headfirst for it, crashing to the ground. Rough soil scraped the skin of her forearms and kneecaps but she ignored the stinging pain even as her glamour dissolved. Dust swirled in the air and obscured her vision, but she felt her hands clasp around something small and smooth.  
  
Amell pushed herself off the ground with her elbows and brought her closed hands to eye-level. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers and saw a glass pebble in her open palms. The glass itself was a dull, but translucent shade of white. Embedded below its surface were stains of opaque gray that must have been dirt.  
  
Turning the stone in her hands, Amell tried to examine it more thoroughly, diligently checking every angle… but it appeared to be just an ordinary rock. The mage girl thought she might scream— _that’s all it was?_ Seething, she was ready to hurl the pebble into the Maker-forsaken void, when she finally saw it.  
  
A speck as minuscule as a guppy’s scale shone in the center of the stone. It could barely be seen behind the dirt flecks, but if Amell held it to the sun _just right_ , the pinprick glowed intensely.  
  
The softest shade of pink she had ever seen glimmered between her fingers. The pigment was so gentle, so… _familiar._ It reached into her and brushed against a part of her mind. A vision of a woman’s lips kissing her on the nose flashed in her mind’s eye. She didn’t recognize the woman, but her soul warmed with the precious feelings of being safe and loved.  
  
Hot tears streaked down her face. Then, as quickly as the vision came, it was gone--along with it the color she might never see again.  
  
Amell chocked out a loud, broken sob.  
  
“What was that?” Curse this world for not even giving her a moment to grieve. Amell quickly pocketed the stone as she conjured another cloaking spell, but not before a man caught a fading glimpse of her.  
  
“I think I saw someone over there. Where’d they go?”  
  
_Shit._  
  
Three figures, soldiers by the looks of it, appeared around the corner and stumbled in her direction, searching for her. Unfortunately, they blocked the pathway she took to get there. She looked around for another exit.  
  
Shrubbery too thick to walk through blocked the path behind her. It would be a risk to disturb it. Her glamour was delicate and could be pierced by the thorns of the thickets. There were some tents on either side of her, but there was no way to walk around them. Panic flooded through her as the soldiers got close enough to touch her.  
  
Without thinking, she flung herself into the nearest tent. The tent flaps rustled forcibly as she entered and she landed noisily on her feet. Her escape may have been less than smooth, but the figures weren’t alerted to her presence.  
  
But while she had successfully evaded the soldiers outside, the man inside the tent heard her, and was none too happy with her intrusion.  
  
“Did I give you permission to enter?”  
  
_Oh, great._  
  
The man on the table didn’t take his eyes off the maps he was surveying. Even if he did look up, he would see nothing. Her cloaking spell was thankfully still in place. However, it didn’t mute her footsteps and breathing. It would seem this man’s ears were very keen. Cursing internally, the mageling kept absolutely still; trying to remember the lessons Duncan had taught her. Unfortunately, the lessons hadn’t covered what to do were she actually caught—or about to be caught.  
  
“What is it?” No doubt the man was expecting an errant messenger or soldier. When only silence answered him, the man finally looked up. Amell had to physically stop herself from screaming.  
  
A man had stepped out of the pages of the history books she had read in the Tower and was sitting right in front of her.  
  
That man was Teryn Loghain.  
  
Amell couldn’t believe her eyes! The Hero of River Dane was right in front of her. The girl felt her skin grow hot. Her breath caught in her throat.  
  
_The legend in her favorite stories, the hero in her fantasies, her knight in shining armor-_ **OH BY THE MAKER, SHE WAS IN HIS TENT! SHE WAS IN LOGHAIN FUCKING MAC TERIN’S TENT!**  
  
The ground under her feet shifted.  
  
_Focus! For the love of all that is decent in this world, FOCUS!_  
  
That’s right. She was an escaped miscreant right now. She’s screwed if she gets caught. Especially if she gets caught in the Fereldan General’s tent!  
  
But by the gods, the man she has dreamt about was right in front of her. And he was staring right at her with such fire in his eyes. Why did he look at her so? His eyes were so dreamy. The steel glint in corner of his iris sent a chill down her –-  
  
_FOCUS!_  
  
Right! He can’t see her. He’s not staring at her. His glare was due to the lack of a person where he was so sure there should have been. Escape plan. She needed an escape plan.  
  
_Quick, think! How did you get past the Templars in the Tower?_  
  
It wasn’t enough that she was invisible then as well. Those hulking Chantry brutes had ears. They stood on either ends of the hall. If she wanted to sneak back into the apprentice dormitories, she had to mask the noise the door would make. It wasn’t hard, though. The clanking of metal on metal always served as a warning that Templars were approaching the mages hiding their amorous activities in dark corners of the Tower. She actually speaks from experience.  
  
So just like she would slip between the doors when the Templars yawned and stretched, causing their armor to creak…as soon as Loghain moves in his own armor, the noise would mask the sounds of her escape.  
  
Irked by the unnatural silence, Loghain stood up from his chair… and he didn’t make a sound.  
  
_Holy burning hell!_  
  
Amell’s knees buckled and she literally --Andraste preserve her-- swooned.  
  
Of course he wouldn’t make a sound. He was a warrior of legend! How could she think he would be anything like the bumbling, pubescent Templars in her cursed prison-home of a Tower? The great warrior moved with grace and power. His armor was like a second skin, as if he was forged with it from flames and iron.  
  
_Focus! Focus, you redundantly, stupid moron!_  
  
But even as she cursed her own pathetic, girly, childish crush, her eyes greedily drank in every detail of him. She had seen renderings of him in Tower library books. But every painting depicting his visage, every careless sketch in all the books in the Tower, could never have done him justice. The unerring sharpness in his eyes, the hard lines of his chiseled face, and the musculature obvious even through the armor on his body radiated strength and knowledge, honed and hardened only through decades of war and battle-won experience. He wasn’t without imperfections. But his faded, white scars and even the way his nose had healed wrong surely from being broken several times over, did nothing to mar his somber attractiveness. He was so roguishly handsome. The sight of him was absolutely glorious.  
  
Amell thought she would die of happiness right then and there.  
  
… except she wasn’t happy. There was now a barren wasteland in her heart where joy had once been. Color had bled out of her world and the defect had robbed her of any opportunity to see anyone she admired, respected, or loved in full color. Her once beautifully, bright world was rotting in the harsh, horrible hues of gray.  
  
The air suddenly tasted bitter and Amell thought she might suffocate. But before she could further drown in the ugliness of her reality, a dagger was hurled in her direction.  
  
Amell shrieked and crumpled to the ground. The blade barely missed her ear. Fear shattered her concentration and the glamour that hid her dissipated. Now she lay fully visible in front of her childhood hero. His brow quirked in confusion with a hint of…was that amusement?  
  
“Well,” His voice was rock against rock, hard and rough. Goosebumps popped up on her skin. “This is the first time I’ve been sent a mage assassin.”  
  
“I’m not an assassin!” There was a desperate part of her that wanted this brilliant man to know she would never hurt him. Her cry must have sounded sincere because cool mirth danced in his eyes.  
  
“Ah, yes.” Just like that the thought was dismissed. Loghain sat back down. “You’re just the girl who tried to kill that Warden.”  
  
A wall of air suddenly snapped into place around the tent walls as Amell remembered how she got here in the first place. Hopefully her magic was enough to keep sound from attracting unwanted attention from the people still trying to track her. As a precaution, she also erected a barrier around herself in case Loghain had more knives to chuck at her.  
  
Loghain either didn’t notice or didn’t care that this strange girl’s magic had created a makeshift cage around him. He picked up a scout’s report and jotted down some notes.  
  
Still on the ground, Amell drew in her knees and wrapped her arms around herself. And just like that, just like sand funneling through an hourglass, her world slowly crumbled again. A part of her desperately tried not to succumb to the… insidious corruption eating away at her. But a greater, more potently, poisonous part of her told that it was hopeless. There was no point in trying to live like this.  
  
In the Fade, demons sensed her vulnerability and gathered, wanting to possess her. But the unholy creatures couldn’t get a firm hold of her, for emptiness had hollowed out a part of her soul and left only a growing void.  
  
_I’m going to die._ It didn’t matter whether or not she desired death. It would come for her as sure as any--  
  
“Why?” The demons, the corruption, and the yawning emptiness all receded, and Amell snapped back into the present. Loghain had spoken to her.  
  
The claws of the monsters, both demons and despair, now haunting her threatened to pull her deeper into a place she could never come back from. But Loghain tugged at something in her as well… and she followed.  
  
“W-why what, ser?” She asked quietly.  
  
“Why did you try to kill him?” Loghain elaborated.  
  
Echos of burning rage thrummed in rhythm with her heartbeat. All the monsters disappeared, washed away in a wave of unbridled fury. Loghain had sparked her anger and she realized right then and there that it was going to keep her alive.  
  
_He… saved me,_ Amell thought in awe.  
  
Almost a decade ago, fairy-tales were an utmost craze among the young mage girls. They related to the damsels and princesses in the stories who were locked up in a tower by an unjust villain. It became a popular pastime between the Tower magelings to fantasize about being rescued by princes and knights in the storybooks. The mage girls would even write about their daydreams and share them among their peers.  
  
Amell never joined in. It was pathetic; children like her wanting to be saved by fictional men. It was beneath her. She had kicked a stack of fairytale books into a group of startled girls as she made her way to the non-fiction section of the library.  
  
It had been a boring day when she had chosen a history book at random for casual perusal. She had only been vaguely interested as she read about noteworthy men in Fereldan history. None of them were noteworthy in her opinion till she read the last entry. The dates suggested that the man she had been reading about was still alive. That was strange. It’s too recent to be called history. And he was just a simple farm boy, not royalty or anything, so why would there already be a documentation of him? She looked for another book to learn more.  
  
That was how her obsession had started.  
  
“Because he claimed to have seen color when he touched me.” The children in the Tower could only dream and fantasize about their made-up heroes, but her Loghain was real. And just liked he saved Fereldan people from the Orlesian regime, he was going to save her. He was going to be her hero.  
  
Unaware of the mage girl’s hero worship for him, Loghain rested his chin on his hand bemused, but guarded. Amell’s heart fluttered at his attention.  
  
“You’re not overjoyed to have found your soulmate?”  
  
“He’s not my soulmate!”  
  
“How sure are you?”  
  
His interest was flattering, but Amell always found it baffling why people found others’ soulmate stories so intriguing.  
  
_He saved you._ Her thoughts chided her. _Be nice for once._  
  
“I already found my soulmate, a long time ago, when I was still a child.” She said a bit stiffly. “I met him the day I was brought to the Tower.”  
  
“So you can see color?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Something dark suddenly flashed in Loghain’s face. He gave her a withering look dripping with distaste. Amell quickly recanted her words.  
  
“I mean, yes, I could. I did! But… I can’t anymore.” For a moment, Loghain stopped existing. For a moment, nothing around her existed. She was alone again in her misery, her already broken heart fractured even more. “My soulmate… he left… and I couldn’t see color anymore.”  
  
There was a long silence between them that carried a bruising weight.  
  
“That’s impossible.” His voice was as quiet as death. There was so much subtle venom laced in those two words that Amell reinforced her barrier spell unconsciously.  
  
“If I hear that phrase one more fucking time –” She let the threat hang in the air between them.  
  
What was she doing? She’s not looking for a fight. Why was she always so hostile?  
  
Amell was suddenly very exhausted. Loghain must have seen her weariness, because his expression changed. He looked almost… sympathetic. She only had a brief second to register what exactly she was seeing before his expression became guarded again.  
  
“So the Warden boy,” he said with notably less animosity. “He claimed to see color because of you. And you, having just lost the ability, flew into a murderous rage and tried to kill him?”  
  
Amell winced.  
  
“Well if you say it like that…”  
  
“He could have been telling the truth.”  
  
“He was lying! I know he was!”  
  
Loghain sighed and pitched his nose.  
  
Great, he was annoyed with her, she thought.  
  
People always defaulted to anger or exasperation when they dealt with her. She didn’’t care about them, because what right did they have to judge her? But Loghain wasn’t supposed to be like other people. He was supposed to be _different._  
  
Rage surged in her veins as she ignored the way her heart sank. She got to her feet and snarled.  
  
“Well, how would you feel, then?” Anger blinded her as she spat her words at him. “If you found your soulmate, but you weren’t _theirs._ ” Loghain’s eyes widen. “But you didn’t care, because you saw color and you loved them anyways. Then one day they get tired of you. Decide you’re not good enough. They leave you! And when they’re gone all the color bleeds out of your world.” The corruption that had tried to destroy her clawed at her again. But she viciously bit down on it and ripped it to pieces. “So tell me, if you were in my shoes, would you be nice? Would you be so trusting? No. You would be bitter, _hateful, and **ALONE!”**_  
  
A loud, resounding crack echoed in her soul. For a moment, she wasn’t broken anymore. She was whole and absolute and pure. A purely vile and twisted creature that was capable of nothing but hurt, hate, and horror. The words she had hurled at Loghain were cruel and unfair. He had done nothing to deserve the abuse she gave him. And as she saw the disguised hurt under the coldness in Loghain’s eyes, she realize she was every bit a monster like the ones trying to kill her.  
  
She shattered once more.  
  
“I-I-I’m sorry.” She stuttered. She wanted to fix this, but she didn’t know how or if she even could. “I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have… You probably don’t want to talk-”  
  
“I don’t.” There was such icy hatred in his tone that Amell flinched.  
  
There was no fixing this. It was over.  
  
“I- I should go…”  
  
“I think that would be for the best.”  
  
Amell quickly cloaked herself in a spell before Loghain could see the tears forming in her eyes. Then, as an afterthought, she floated the dagger he had thrown at her back to his side with magic.  
  
“Well, it was nice meeting you, ser. Goodbye.” Her voice was a quiet echo in her wake.  
  
Amell was already gone when Loghain plucked the floating dagger out of the air. Her lingering magic on the metal seeped into his skin and settled in his bones.  
  
Loghain gasped.  
  
Color, as bright and vibrant as the first time he saw them, flared in his vision. Tints, hues, and pigments he had long forgotten had come flooding back in a torrent of dazzlingly, immense beauty. It had been lost to him, but feeling of untainted joy came rushing back.  
  
Because his memory of Rowana was no longer washed in the awful shades of gray. He finally remembered her again, the way she was before he lost her, after so many years, in the full spectrum of color.  
  
He knew before it started fading that it wouldn’t last. He didn’t let it break him again like the first time.  
  
But as the color bled away, his last thought wasn’t of the dead queen.  
  
It was of the mage girl whose eyes lit with passion when she spoke.  
  
He caught a glimpse of the last bit of color on himself in the reflection of the dagger in his hand. Loghain cringed as the sight became permanently embedded in his memories.  
  
His cheeks were flushed in the embarrassing color of pink.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Have a flustered Amell. <3  
> 


End file.
